We have recently taken delivery of a new vacuum chamber which we have already started work on getting it ready for commissioning. Some of the new pumps and control units have arrived and we are currently populating and wiring the control/measurement rack units. This new vacuum chamber system will be TVAC#2 and features water cooling on the chamber walls and, importantly, the door seals, which means it will be capable of higher temperature testing than TVAC#1.

We have used the down time of the chamber in the last few weeks of 2017 to further optimise the PID control for the thermal plate in TVAC#1 which means it is now capable of reaching temperature faster and with negligible overshoot. We continue to see a high demand for bakeouts on TVAC#1 and we are working quickly to get TVAC#2 up and running to help with this.

We continue to develop our solar simulators and have a couple of product enhancements planned for 2018 for both our standard Unisim close match range as well as our Unisim Compact. For a free in-house demonstration of our Unisim Compact, please feel free to contact us.

We hope you all had a good break over the Christmas holiday and look forward to working with you over the coming year.